I did say that the game would be unpredictable, since it was mostly player generated. And the first thing I noticed is that it went completely unexpected.

I made it pretty clear that the point of the game was to innovate; to build your own society. And that's pretty fun, just on it's own. But apparently that wasn't enough for the players. Despite the fact that, by the nature of the game, no one was really at odds with one another, they insisted on killing everyone off. Instead of building things that would increase their satisfaction level and better society, they spent all their time building weapons in a huge arms race.

I've spent some time thinking about why this would happen. At first, I thought it was just boredom. But the more I thought about it, that didn't seem right. Despite every opportunity they had to better themselves, they chose to harm their neighbors instead. Very little trust was ever established between players. If the players had made different decisions, they very well may have advanced further in one day than they had through this entire game.

But it has finally occurred to me what the problem was. This whole game has been a textbook example of The Prisoner's Dilemma. You can look it up if you want a detailed explanation but basically The Prisoner's Dilemma is a scenario in which the best decision for each individual, combined, is actually the worst case scenario for everyone. It's essentially the story of most of humanity's failures. In this case, everyone thought that everyone else was out to get them, so they had to get them first. Essentially, The Cold War.

Now, some Libertarians might laugh at me for this, but I think the reason why this occurred is because there was no Social Contract. It's what reverses The Prisoner's Dilemma. When people have a Social Contract, they go into The Prisoner's Dilemma knowing about it and having a deal do cooperate for the greater good. That's really what the big change was when we came out of Dark Ages. We established a Social Contract.

So, next time around, I'm going to set things up a little differently. Instead of leaving a blank slate, I'll have the necessary infrastructure already in place. It could still erupt in violence, either out of spite or boredom. But it has a much better shot.

Now, that's not all I noticed that was completely whack about how people played the game. In-fact, there was a great multitude of completely irrational behavior. And I'm not sure why they never noticed the absurdity of what they were doing. I mean, I'm a smart guy. But I'm not that much smarter than them, am I? What is it about being a player that made them completely oblivious? I haven't figured that one out.

The most obvious problem was the fiat currency. It was a really hopeless situation. I started the game with two banks. This allowed currency competition. But then one of the banks bought out the other one....with currency it printed. How can you fall for that? That one bank then became the defacto central bank, owned by one person. This banker then had everyone work for them, being payed with this currency. And, oh, did I forget something? It's completely worthless. Everyone just assumed the money has value, cause'--hey--, it's money. But everyone forgot what the whole point of a bank is. You put stuff of value in it for safe keeping and you get a receipt in return(money). No one did this. The bank was empty. It only printed money. Everyone accepted the money. No one imposed any limit on how much the banker could print. This gave the banker an infinite wallet. And that's not even the whole absurdity of it. After people spent their working hours gaining worthless currency, they never did anything with it. At no point in the game was there a single transaction using the money besides when people were first initially payed for work. So it's almost like people actually recognized that it had no value. Yet they still worked for it instead of demanding more ore or crops, which everyone did give value.

Now, lets take a look at those things called ore and crop. Crop is used for eating or planting--that's it. Ore is the very foundation of the game. It's what people can use to build everything out of. What we see in the game is that people scarcely made any distinction between the two. They sought just as many crops as ore. Even though ore is much more useful and is exhausted much more quickly. On top of that, only a certain amount of crop can be eaten in a day. Continuing the absurdity, only one person ran into that issue. No one else even tried to eat a ton of their overabundance of crop in an effort to increase their satisfaction level. They just let it sit around. Again, just like with the money, we see people trying to acquire something for no good reason.

So yeah, basically none of it made any sense. We'll see how things work out with a few adjustments.

'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.' - John 16:13

'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.' - John 16:13

'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.' - John 16:13

I think that the main problem was that there really was no benefit to getting satisfaction when you could win just as easily by killing everyone else. Why build a skyscraper when I can just make sure no one else can get there?

#UnbanTheMadman

"Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights..."

At 12/17/2012 1:07:34 AM, Wallstreetatheist wrote:Reservations list:1. Any who played last time.2. TheAntidoter3. Dignitas4. Wallstreetatheist

I've never played a game on this site before, so this should be a fun introduction to the games forum.

*gasp*

#UnbanTheMadman

"Some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights..."

'When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.' - John 16:13